Chapter 10

The stone slab exploded outward in a shower of fragments. Rex burst through like a force of nature, his enhanced body moving faster than his mind could fully process. The corridor beyond was narrow, lit by those same embedded stones that gave off their sickly light.

Four figures scrambled backward from the destroyed door. Rex's bone weapons were already in motion, powered by foundation-level strength and Berserker fury. The first strike caught one figure in the chest, launching it into the wall with enough force to crack stone. The second and third went down just as quickly, Rex's weapons blurring through the air.

The fourth figure stood apart, head bowed so only his strange red hat was visible. No—not a hat. As dust settled and Rex's eyes adjusted, he could see it was wrong somehow. The brim was too organic, too much a part of the figure's head.

The guard. The one who'd fled.

But he'd brought friends this time.

The three figures Rex had struck down were already stirring, pushing themselves up with movements that were wrong, jerky, unnatural. As they stood, Rex got his first clear look at them in the corridor's dim light.

They were zombies, but not like the movies. These had been people—his people, from the neighborhood. He recognized one despite the decay, Mr. Chen from three houses down. The man's chest had been caved in by something, probably what killed him, but the wound was filled with green stone that pulsed with faint light. Similar stones protruded from the others' injuries—a head wound here, a torn throat there—like crystalline scabs holding their bodies together.

The guard's hands caught Rex's attention next. They weren't normal flesh but seemed almost fibrous, like bundles of plant matter woven into the shape of fingers. Wrong. Everything about him was wrong.

Rage flared at seeing his neighbors turned into puppets. Not the alien anger of his dao but genuine human fury. These people deserved better than to be weapons.

One zombie lunged at him, movements faster than any corpse should manage. Rex's first instinct was to obliterate it, but he held back slightly, swinging with just his enhanced strength. No anger dao, no demolition—just the raw power of his new body.

His bone club connected with the zombie's chest. Ribs shattered like kindling, the entire torso caving in. The force lifted it off its feet, sending it crashing into the far wall. Another swing caught a second zombie in the skull, the head simply disappearing in a spray of gore.

They should have stayed down. Any normal enemy would have.

Instead, they got back up.

The headless corpse pushed itself to its feet, moving by some impossible sense despite lacking eyes or ears. The one with the crushed chest wheezed through destroyed lungs but came at him again. The other two rushed him at the same time.

Rex kicked one hard enough to embed it in the wall, stone cracking around its body. He grabbed the other and swung it like a club at the guard, who was trying to enter the fight. The zombie and guard tangled together as they hit the wall, limbs intertwining in a grotesque parody of an embrace.

That's when Rex saw it—the green stone protruding from the headless zombie's severed neck, glowing brighter as the body moved. Memory clicked. The gorilla beast had possessed a similar stone, and he'd accidentally destroyed it with demolition. That's why it had stayed dead.

Rex adjusted his grip on his weapon and swung precisely at the exposed stone. It shattered like glass, and the headless corpse immediately crumpled, finally truly dead. The one embedded in the wall had its control stone visible in its forearm—Rex crushed it with a targeted strike, and another body fell.

The zombie with the collapsed chest proved trickier, its stone hidden somewhere in the mangled torso. Rex had to duck a wild swing from it while simultaneously tracking the guard, who was trying to flank him. The remaining zombie seemed to move deliberately into the guard's path, blocking every attempt he made to attack. It looked accidental, but the timing was too perfect.

An idea struck Rex. He pushed demolition energy into his next strike, not to destroy but to scan. Like he'd done with the walls, he used the dao to map the zombie's structure. On his second strike, he focused his intent on finding foreign objects.

The stone lit up in his spiritual vision, embedded in the zombie's lower back. Rex tapped it with surgical precision, shattering the stone. The zombie dropped mid-lunge.

The distraction cost him. The guard's sword opened a gash along Rex's right arm, blood immediately soaking his skin. But the wound was already beginning to close—his constitution at work. And now Rex could focus entirely on the guard.

He cranked both anger and demolition to maximum, his weapons glowing with visible power. The guard raised his shield, bracing for impact.

The shield shattered. So did the arm behind it. Rex's next strike took out a kneecap, dropping the guard to the ground. A final blow to the chest ensured he stayed down.

For a moment, silence filled the corridor. Rex's breathing was the only sound, harsh and ragged from exertion and rage.

Then the guard began to rise.

But this was different from the zombies' resurrection. His eyes blazed with brilliant green light, like emerald fires had been lit behind his pupils. His movements became fluid, predatory, completely unlike his previous fighting style. He didn't reach for his sword. Instead, he charged Rex directly, slamming him into the wall with shocking strength.

The guard's mouth opened impossibly wide, revealing rows of fibrous strands instead of teeth. He bit at Rex's shoulder, clawed at his face with those plant-like hands. His strength had multiplied several times over—Rex actually had to exert effort to hold him back.

In the grapple, pressed face to face, Rex finally saw the guard clearly.

The face was only vaguely humanoid. Layers of fibrous material covered it like a nylon stocking pulled too tight, distorting the features beneath. The red 'hat' wasn't a hat at all but a growth from his head, a mushroom cap complete with gills underneath. He wasn't human. Had never been human.

Rex's hand scraped against something hard under the mushroom cap's brim—another control stone, but this one was different. Energy lines ran from it throughout the creature's body, a network of power that explained the resurrection. It had reanimated itself, using its own stone to come back stronger.

Rex snapped the thing's arm with a vicious twist, using the moment of weakness to grab the stone. He ripped it free with enough force to tear away part of the mushroom cap.

The guard-thing collapsed instantly, truly dead this time.

Rex examined the corpse more carefully. It had no real orifices—no nostrils, no ear holes, the mouth just a split in the fibrous mass. The entire body was plant matter shaped into human form, held together by will and that control stone. A puppet pretending to be a puppeteer.

Rex grabbed the corpse by one fibrous leg and dragged it toward the catacomb entrance, needing to understand what they were facing. The cool evening air hit him as he emerged, a relief after the underground mustiness. Stars were just becoming visible in the darkening sky.

A figure stood waiting for him.

Another mushroom creature, but this one made no attempt to hide its nature. It wore robes that looked like they were woven from grass and moss. Its head was shaped like a pointed wizard's hat—not wearing one, but its actual head formed that way. A staff covered in colorful mushrooms of various sizes completed the image. It looked like something from a children's fairy tale, if fairy tales met cosmic horror.

The thing raised its hands in what appeared to be a peaceful gesture and made a series of creaking, groaning sounds. Like wood straining in wind, or old hinges protesting movement.

Rex stood there, confused, still holding the dead guard's leg.

Riasha materialized from his chest—a disconcerting sight he wasn't used to yet—and looked at him expectantly.

"What?" Rex asked.

"He's talking to you."

"Those creaks and groans were language? How the hell am I expected to understand that?"

Riasha sighed. "He says he has a deal for you."

"What kind of deal?"

The mushroom mage responded immediately with more creaking sounds, clearly able to understand Rex even if the reverse wasn't true.

Riasha's expression turned to disgust. "He says if you join them and take the 'spore stone,' he'll take you to his master and you could become great. Power, position, purpose—blah, blah, blah. Standard recruitment pitch from a death cult. They probably say the same thing to everyone before turning them into fertilizer."

Rex looked at the mage, then at the corpse he was still holding. His neighbors turned into zombies. His parents dead. His world invaded. "No thanks."

He dropped the corpse and charged, leaping high with his enhanced strength. Both bone weapons raised overhead, he channeled maximum anger and demolition, intending to crush this thing into paste.

There was a puff of spores where the mage had been standing. Rex's weapons hit empty ground hard enough to crater it. Twenty-five feet away, the mage reappeared in another cloud of spores, unharmed.

Rex snarled and immediately changed direction, charging again. Another puff of spores, another teleportation. But this time Rex ran through the cloud, inhaling some of the particles. His vision immediately doubled, then tripled. Colors that didn't exist began bleeding into the world. The ground seemed to breathe beneath his feet.

The mage made more creaking sounds, these with a distinctly mocking edge. Then came a rustling that could only be laughter.

"He's taunting you," Riasha translated unnecessarily. "Calling you a stupid animal who—"

That was all Rex needed to hear. His eyes blazed red, literally glowing with anger dao. The hallucinations meant nothing against his rage. He charged again, faster this time, leaving cracks in the ground with each step.

The mage raised its staff, channeling earth dao into the mushrooms growing on it. They glowed brown and green as it pointed at Rex, firing a boulder the size of a basketball at his chest.

Rex swatted it aside with one weapon like batting away a tennis ball. His hand went numb from the impact, tingles running up his arm, but he didn't slow. The mage's surprise at his casual deflection cost it crucial seconds.

Rex was on it before it could teleport again, weapons already swinging. The first blow should have shattered it, but the mage was surprisingly durable. Its body was denser than wood, more like stone given plant form. Rex's demolition dao tried to find weak points but something pushed back, an alien energy that rejected his scanning.

He poured more power into his strikes, anger and demolition mixing into something beyond either. His weapons became blurs, each impact sending shockwaves through the air. The mage tried to teleport but Rex grabbed it with his free hand, anchoring it in place.

Something finally gave way. Whatever protection the mage had shattered like a dam breaking. Its body crumpled under Rex's assault, fibrous matter splitting and tearing. Green sap that smelled of rot and earth splattered everywhere.

Rex stood over the corpse, chest heaving, his body covered in plant gore. He scanned the area, enhanced senses searching for more threats. Finding none, he grabbed the mage's body and dragged it back to where he'd left the guard.

Riasha emerged fully from Rex and began searching the corpses with professional efficiency. "Clothes won't fit you," she muttered, "but maybe—ah!"

From the mage's robes, she pulled out a pouch that rattled with stones. She poured them into her hand—dozens of control stones, green agate inscribed with tiny runes. Rex could feel the dominance dao radiating from them. Just touching one made his anger flare defensively.

"We're keeping these," Riasha pocketed the stones without explanation. "But we're getting rid of those." She pointed at the corpses.

"How?"

"Fire, of course."

Rex looked around dramatically at the empty park, then held out his hand toward the bodies. "Fireball!"

Riasha stared at him with an expression that could have curdled milk. "I preferred it when you were meek." She reached into her belt pouch, again and handed him a paper sachet filled with grey powder. "Just sprinkle this on the bodies. Corpse disposal powder. Every cultivator should carry some."

Rex spread the powder over the mushroom creatures and the human zombies he'd dragged out. The moment the powder touched them, they burst into white flames that burned impossibly hot. In seconds, nothing remained. Not even ash. The ground where they'd lain wasn't even scorched.

Riasha inspected the aftermath, nodding with satisfaction. "Good. No evidence, no essence traces. Now," she turned to Rex, finally acknowledging his state, "let's get you some real food. And clothes. You can't fight the invasion naked, no matter how impressive your new physique might be."

Rex looked down at himself, remembering for the first time since his transformation that he was completely unclothed. His new body, marked with red undertones and covered in blood and plant matter, must have been quite a sight. The thought should have embarrassed him, but his constitution seemed to have burned away such concerns along with his mortality.

"Food first," he decided. His stomach, enhanced or not, was cramping with hunger. "Then clothes. Then we figure out what these mushroom things are and why they're here."

"Agreed." Riasha started walking toward the residential area. "And Rex? You did well. You're adapting faster than expected. But remember—these were scouts. Weak ones. Whatever sent them will send more, and stronger."

Rex followed her, his weapons still gripped tightly in his hands. Let them come, he thought. His anger dao purred agreement.